


A Flame Lit and Set Loose

by Leeroy_in_purple



Series: Monsters and Mobsters AU [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Butcher!Neil, Gratuitous use of a Silence of the Lambs quote, Implied Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lawyer!Andrew, M/M, Mild Language, Neil Josten as Nathaniel Wesninski, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head there's implied Ichindreil, please be kind, this is my first fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 11:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16742902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leeroy_in_purple/pseuds/Leeroy_in_purple
Summary: Nathaniel Wesninski is brought in for questioning about the disappearance of four men who were involved in the attack on Nicky Klose and his husband. No one counted on Andrew Minyard being his lawyer.





	A Flame Lit and Set Loose

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how the American legal system works. Pls forgive. I just wanted to write a fic.
> 
> This is not beta-d. Any mistakes are all mine. (But if you'd like to beta please let me know *puppy eyes*)
> 
> Warnings: Nathaniel Wesninski, foul language, implied violence - nothing explicit. Let me know if I should add more tags.

“You’re letting my client go.”

Both cops turned to stare at all five foot nothing of Andrew Minyard, clothed head to toe in an all-black suit in the doorway of the interrogation room. He wasn’t even looking at them or his supposed client. Instead, the little shit was typing lazily on his phone with one hand. The other held a lit cigarette.

“What the –” breathed the first cop.

The other hissed out a: “You can’t smoke in here!”

Andrew stopped typing. He then looked the second cop dead in the eye and lifted the cigarette to his lips before taking a long drag. He stared at he cigarette between his thumb and index finger as he held the smoke in his lungs. When he exhaled again, white-grey smoke curled slowly from his mouth and rose around his head before it dissipated in the air, the scent of it thick and somewhat familiar to them.

Andrew returned to typing on his phone, the cigarette still held lightly in hand. “I hate repeating myself,” he growled, loud enough to be heard. “And I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“I don’t know who the hell you think you are –” Cop Number Two began.

Cop Number One said (a little cautiously), “That’s not how it works here.”

Andrew barely managed to suppress an eye roll before he focused his attention on the man cuffed to the interrogation table.

Nathaniel Wesninski, borne from violence and pain and wearing danger like his own skin, sat in the chair not like a suspect waiting to be convicted, but rather like an impatient prince in his slate grey Zegna suit. To the untrained eye, he looked exactly like a business man’s son was expected to look: young, pampered and careless. Andrew knew better, however. Neil was only one of those things and he was every inch his gangster father’s son.

Neil’s eyes were dead grey-blue pools if you didn’t know him well enough. He’d endured too much to have much life left in him. If they sparkled, if they lit up with that crazed half smile he sometimes wore, it usually meant that somebody was about to die. Violently.

The cops didn’t catch it, the way Neil’s eyes seemed to darken slightly when Andrew had entered the room, the knife sharp smirk on his lips that was there and then gone again so quickly you’d assume it hadn’t been there in the first place if you didn’t know Nathaniel Wesninski well.

“Has my client answered any of your questions?” Andrew demanded.

“Unfortunately,” Cop Number One began, “Mr Wesninski has not been forthcoming with the details of his involvement in the disappearance of –”

“Is my client willing to answer any further questions?”

“Uh, well, no–”

“Are there formal charges being pressed against my client?”

The low-level detectives glanced at each other with equal looks of defeat. Cop Number One sighed. “Mr Wesninski is not a suspect in our investigation. But he has been labelled a possible witness. He was brought in for questioning under the suspicion that he may know something about the attack on Mr Nicholas Klose and his husband and the disappearance of the men–”

“Then I see no reason to continue this farce of an interrogation.” He turned his attention to Neil. “Do you have anything else to add or are you ready to go?”

Andrew’s eyes met the placid blue of Neil’s. Just because he was quiet, didn’t mean he had nothing to say. Behind the feigned calm, there was bottomless rage lurking in Neil’s eyes that few had had the privilege to witness and still have breath in their lungs. The corner of Neil’s lips quirked up again. That smile was a beautiful and endlessly dangerous little thing. Andrew hated it.

“Took your fucking time today,” Neil remarked.

“Traffic,” was Andrew’s blank-faced reply.

Neil huffed a laugh and stood. The hand cuffs fell from his wrists as if they hadn’t even been secured in the first place. He shrugged his suit jacket on while both detectives sputtered, unsure what to do.

Neil had waited silently in the interrogation room as Andrew had advised, even as both detectives had hurled insults and tried to coerce answers from him, he hadn’t said a word since he’d requested his lawyer. It frustrated the cops to no end. Nathaniel, Andrew thought, was too much of an attractive shit-stirrer to be left to his own devices. The redhead could probably pick a fight in an empty room, temperamental as he was. Andrew was doubtful he could keep his cool long enough to sort out the not so small matter of a personal attack on his people, by himself.

They stepped out of one of Chicago’s police precincts with little trouble after that and breathed in the late afternoon air that wafted through the streets. Nathaniel Wesninski and Andrew Minyard were not well known this far north but their influence was. Nathaniel had whittled away the rotten parts of the family business he had no patience for then rebuilt it in his own image into a more refined, self-contained monster. The Wesninski Empire had only grown after his ascension and although he was still partnered with the Moriyama’s, he enjoyed more privilege than the butcher before him. Of course, the local mobs did not appreciate such a powerful partnership having a presence in their city, but Neil had made sure they understood that the only reason they weren’t dead or out of business, was because his own ambition (or lack thereof) was limited to what part of the East Coast he already controlled.

That hadn’t stopped some dumbass from trying to test him, however, by going after Andrew’s family. Andrew wondered just how much they would regret it when Neil was done.

“How are Nicky and Erik?” Neil asked, voice quiet and eyes trained outside the window while Andrew drove. If Andrew wasn’t listening for it, he wouldn’t have caught the note of rage simmering below the surface. Idly, Andrew thought it both interesting and annoying how that rage only manifested itself now, when Andrew’s family was threatened rather than when Neil had been arrested. He tried to shake the feeling.

Andrew sometimes hated the way Neil held himself so carefully in check when it came to threats against himself. He wasn’t sure he wanted know how much it would take to see _Nathaniel_ lose control, in response.

On the other hand, Andrew knew exactly what it took for Neil to take the name ‘Butcher’ and methodically _unmake_ those that threatened his business or his people. He knew exactly what it took to have blood on the walls and screams in the air to protect those the Nathaniel deemed important enough to be his.

And because of that, Andrew wanted every mobster in this damned city to know Nathaniel Wesninski was not one to be fucked with.

For some, violence was a clumsy, dirty thing that could not be honed or mastered. For Nathaniel, borne from butchers and raised on blood and pain, violence was a glorious art in which he was well practiced. In those moments, Nathaniel was a flame lit and set loose. He was alive, alive, _alive_ and so vibrant, burned so brightly, sometimes it hurt to look at him too long.

Andrew shook those thoughts from his head. _Later_ , he told himself. He would witness that beautiful monster later.

For now, he answered Neil’s question. “Nicky’s got a concussion and some cracked ribs but he’ll bounce right back in a few days. Erik’s a little bruised too but he’s more worried about Nicky.”

“Aaron?”

“Who gives a shit?”

Neil nodded, as accepting of that answer as any that Andrew gave him.

The car was quiet for a while before Andrew spoke again. “Letting them try to question you was a dumb idea.” The late afternoon traffic had abated but the roads were still full and slow-moving. Andrew couldn’t wait until they were out of this city.

Neil’s grey-blue eyes were empty once again, a little thoughtful but empty nonetheless. “They’ll be more careful next time, true, but no one suspects I had anything to do with those fuckers disappearing from right under their noses. They think I’m just some rich family friend with friends in low places trying to find out what happened, if anything. They wanted a chance to pin something on me because they can’t do anything to the mobs that own them. As far as they know, I don’t have much power here.

And even if they do suspect I had something to do with it, trying to arrest me today would have been stupid. They don’t know if I’m involved and if they think I am, who is going to come after me without concrete proof? I’ve got the best lawyer in country. No one is going to touch me.”

Andrew hated Neil. A lot.

“Something will stick eventually.” Andrew wasn’t pessimistic, he was realistic. If the authorities and the FBI kept digging, eventually they would find something. Even Neil wasn’t naïve enough to think otherwise.

“I have you, don’t I?” There was a small uptick of the corner of Neil’s mouth and it was like a dewy morning sunrise. It wasn’t enough to bring life into Neil’s eyes. “Anyway, we’ll need to stop by the hotel after you’ve seen Nicky. I really don’t want to ruin this suit.”

Andrew rolled his eyes, knowing that Neil didn’t give two shits about the designer suit. “What you need is a straitjacket and a muzzle,” he said, unamused.

“Hmm. Maybe I’ll eat _your_ liver with some fava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti,” Neil deadpanned.

Andrew _really_ hated him, even as he sniggered.

***

Later, when Nicky and Erik were back at Aaron’s sleeping off their injuries, the place watched by Wesninski henchmen, Andrew drove Neil’s rental SLS to a nondescript warehouse close to the lake-shore. Neil’s people had it surrounded; Andrew was sure even without spotting one or two of them on adjacent roofs. Andrew parked the car in the alleyway between buildings and lit a cigarette when he stepped out. He could have predicted that Neil would steal his cigarette. Andrew scowled when all the redhead did was hold it to his nose. He lit another one anyway.

They were quiet while they smoked. Neil’s eyes were focused somewhere off in the distance, not quite thoughtful but calm anyway. When both cigarettes were ashes on the ground, Neil shrugged Nathaniel Wesninski on like a well-worn jacket and walked through the side door into the warehouse. Andrew pulled a black leather case from under his seat, locked the car and followed.

Four men were chained by their arms to the horizontal steel beams of the ceiling in the centre of the space. A large plastic sheet covered the area beneath them.

Bright arctic-blue eyes locked on Andrew. The monster in front of him held a steady hand out. “Knives.”

Andrew handed the black case with Nathaniel’s knives in it. He didn’t let go. “Rounds one through three are mine.”

A lazy grin grew over the mouth that used to belong to Neil. Andrew would never admit to the way an all-consuming fire burned through his body. This. This is what Andrew had been waiting all day for. The monster had awakened.

“Very well. I’ll take whatever’s left.”

Andrew let go of the case and with it firmly by his side, Nathaniel unfolded the steel chair one of his people had provided and sat, ready to watch the show.

Andrew pulled on a pair of black gloves in his pocket for this very occasion, then flexed his fingers.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought. Kudos and critique both welcome. Prompts are also welcome. :)
> 
> If you wanna know more about this au or feel that it needs more explanation, let me know. 
> 
> Come holla at me at hrh-queenexyday on tumblr :)


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